<p>And how does one know that the guidance counselor didn’t inadvertently let the other early schools know about the LONG list of other early schools?</p>
<p>I don’t think she applied early to more than the two which do not restrict early action applications to other colleges, i.e. MIT and UofC. The point I was trying to make was that she had great chances to get into any of the colleges on her list, as long as she applied in the early round. However, all the colleges her parent’s complaining about DO have restrictive early rounds. They DO know she chose not to apply early. </p>
<p>If she attended a private school, yes, the guidance counselor might not push for a student who already has a wonderful acceptance in hand as hard as she would for a student who had not yet found a “home.”</p>
<p>@Pepper and @Consolation, I’ve learned long ago that it’s better to stay on the sidelines and observe around here but I have been hitting the like button for all of your posts. And now I have to chime in. At first I read the OP’s post because I once lived in the northeast and was told during the period that my older kids were applying to college that they should be thanking their lucky stars that they were not white girls from Long Island. Like it or not, admit it or not, coming from an overrepresented demographic limits a kid’s chances to certain schools. I felt that the OP laid out her daughter’s situation in a calm, reasonable fashion and did not wail about it. I saw it as puzzled hurt and I understood it. I never felt she was blaming those who were admitted. She was just telling it like it is. And was attacked for it. Geez people. For some of us yet to go through this current admissions climate, this is HELPFUL. The speculation and admonitions really aren’t. (Those who suggested alternatives to consider, like Mount Holyoke, now that’s helpful. Until next year when there’s a rush on Mount Holyoke and we’re all reconvening here, wondering what went wrong and why a different highly qualified girl didn’t gain admission there and the cycle of recriminations starts anew.) </p>
<p>It gets harder and harder to opt out of the system even when we want to. To the poster who talked about California residents going happily off to attend UCs…umm, have you read any of the threads surrounding admissions to the UCs this year? I’m not talking about Cal or UCLA. Try looking at Davis, SB, SD, SC and look at the numbers of disappointed, bewildered kids, many of whom thought they were clear admits and seemed that way based on pretty current data. Please, all of you who have had kids go through this 5+ years ago or more or who were lucky enough to win the lottery, try to bring a little less judgment to the table. </p>
<p>3girls- your post is wonderful and measured. BUT- you can’t proclaim that your white kid has gotten the short end of the stick in a title of a thread and then be surprised when people “call you out” on your racial claim. Where do you see these other elite schools being overrun by the Hispanic and African American men who are allegedly getting admissions preferences?</p>
<p>Re: the reason for the extreme tension about getting into top schools…it’s always been there in some communities, but it has increased in proportion to soaring college costs. It makes a lot of sense. If you’re pouring a quarter of a million dollars into one purchase, you really want to get the best possible product. That goes double if, like those of us in Illinois, New Hampshire, Vermont, etc., four years at the flagship now runs well into six figures. It’s a lot harder to be happy with “good enough” at these prices.</p>
<p>Re: the “Why College X” essays: They serve multiple purposes. In addition to helping the school assess fit, that essay helps the school predict yield. It’s very hard for schools outside the best name brands to discern who’s actually interested in attending. Requiring an essay that’s unique to the school puts up a small bar to applying that discourages kids who don’t care. Many of these essays have the wrong school name in them, or praise nonexistent programs. Those are informative red flags to the college that this student is phoning it in.</p>
<p>Blossom, it is a good point you made about those in the midwest applying to local schools like Case Western, UCh, Northwestern , WU-SL, CMU, and having lower odds of accepetance especially if they are in the states of those school or living within an hour away. I have friends who wanted their kids to stay close and had such schools on their list and they were WLed and rejected when NE students were accepted. There is the geographic diversity issue. CMU freely admits that they have two pools for admission, those from within the greater Pittsburgh area and other. Every good college grad just about in Pittsburgh will apply to CMU. They could fill their classes with locals, but they do not want to be a second Pitt. </p>
<p>Looking at the many, many Naviance graphs, some Parchment points, etc, Blossom for many of the highly selective schools, it is pretty clear to me that a lot of the outlier points are due to URMs. I had to caution my son about looking at some of thoee who were accepted with gpas and test scores outside the cluster, and in several cases I knew well what extra consideration those outlier got, in terms of being in a special pool for admissions, such as athletic recruit, legacy, special circumstance, URM. At those schools where the gender ratios are lopsided, the gender that needs a boost in numbers gets it. MIT is a case in point where females actually do get some boost as the numbers clearly show. More than twice the percentage of females are accepted over males and there is gap in test scores by gender as well. In this case, for the OP, her gender was in her favor for admissions and she still did not get accepted. </p>
<p>@3girls3cats - My take on the OP posts is slightly different than yours. Thank you for your perspective, as it is a valid one. </p>
<p>For the record, I went through the college process with my DSs last year and this year, so my kid and the OP’s kid were in the same admissions cycle. </p>
<p>^^^ That’s why I love the scattergrams vs. printed averages. You can see the clusters.</p>
<p>blossom, I think you are putting too much weight on the “white” part. The OP was using the SWF acronym familiar from personal ads and the movies. Obviously, the D being “single” had no bearing. </p>
<p>But since you ask, the fact is that there is a big shortage of Latin and AA males with 36 ACTs and 2300+ on their SATIIs, not to mention 3.9+ GPAs in a challenging, AP-heavy curriculum. Colleges like these are trying to find them. I am willing to bet you that an AA male with those stats would have been accepted at almost all of these colleges. Possibly all.</p>
<p>The “plodder” thread is heartbreaking. Now she’s been referred to as an ox. Sweet baby Jesus. I’ve often wondered how some CC parents feel about their average, below average or struggling students. The plodder thread is one answer and one I was saddened to see. I wonder if that child would be writing in saying, “I’m a good student, have overcome a disability, love taking risks and challenging myself beyond what I’m “supposed” to be able to do, but my parents feel I should do as I’m told and that I should limit myself. I feel I will never measure up.” </p>
<p>The bottom line is that there are 4,000 colleges out there and many, many more that the top 10, or 20 or even 50 can give students a good education and expand their world. Not everyone gets that, and they turn on the URM’s the Midwestern kid, the “hooked” kid for “stealing” their spot in one of the anointed schools. And they’re being myopic for doing so, IMO. OP’s kid was left with some great options but chose to focus on the perceived short-changes she was handed, as do some others on CC. What a waste of energy.</p>
<p>sseamom, the KID did not post. If you insist on blaming someone, don’t blame her.</p>
<p>
This is true, and I don’t think it helps much to pretend that it isn’t. It’s clear from statistics that the most selective colleges do, in fact, accept numerous hooked candidates each year whose grades/scores would be insufficient to gain them admission without the hook. SOME of them would get in without the hook, and you can’t tell which ones by looking at them–which is where the unfair judging can come in. But all you have to do is to read the results threads for a few years to observe this. You don’t see anybody getting into the top schools with grades/scores so low that they aren’t likely to be able to do the work–something which is not the case for athletic recruits at many less selective colleges, by the way. Indeed, the Ivies have an established system to ensure that none of them takes athletic recruits that are too weak academically.</p>
<p>There are many opinions about whether colleges should relax academic standards to admit athletes, URMs, legacies, development cases (i.e., really rich people) and others. They also relax academic standards to achieve gender balance and geographic diversity, but these seem less controversial. I’ll bet you, though, that more people are admitted to super-selective schools each year because they are from less-populated states than are admitted as development cases. And I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that more are admitted because they are men (or women, for certain schools) than are admitted because they are URMs. We can talk about these polices forever, but the bottom line is, if you don’t like them, start your own college, or buy one.</p>
<p>Consolation: “she”=MOM, not KID. May have guessed wrong on the gender there. </p>
<p>“Why do people in other parts of the country have a positive impression of their state universities (and I’m not talking about Berkeley and UVA here, I’m talking about more typical state universities?”</p>
<p>Because it’s a different culture. Because there’s few places in the city of Chicago, for example, you can’t get to with a University of Illinois degree. I was dumbfounded by it when I moved to the Midwest from the East where state universities were seen as where the “eh” students go, but it’s just a different world here. A bright valedictorian (etc) can choose to go to U of I and no one thinks twice. I don’t think you guys really understand that the Ivies are not revered the way they are in the East Coast, except in certain circles. That is not a critique of the Ivies, as they all are excellent; they just aren’t the be-all-and-end-all.</p>
<p>@Hunt - Agreed. Opinions aside, private colleges are private institutions and they are free to do as they wish, whether anyone agrees or not. A top-flight college acceptance is a privilege, not a right or an entitlement based on stats etc.</p>
<p>Consolation- I am aware of the racial issues you describe. My point is that the OP’s premise appeared to be that his daughter was somehow hobbled in the admissions process by her race, her gender, or her geographic region (and truth be told- based on her stats and the choice of schools, she was impacted by all of the above.) But in my mind- one of her top choices (or does the op want to claim she wasn’t interested in Chicago and applied early under duress?) where her geography was a plus and not a minus was Chicago, and she was accepted. She may have had similar success at Rice, who knows.</p>
<p>But one cannot look at the racial composition of the elite schools and somehow claim that white suburban kids (either male or female) are being systematically declined or discriminated against.</p>
<p>And on the subject of the female preference at MIT- I think a female premed at MIT is the most common female applicant in the pool. I am willing to wager that a female with what is described at MIT as “hard core” (i.e ME, EE, etc) in fact may benefit from some sort of preference, and I am willing to wager that this preference goes away entirely for anything in bio or the life sciences.</p>
<p>A savvy GC might have suggested that since MIT does not require HS kids to declare a major, tagging oneself as Pre-Med (which isn’t a major at MIT at all) could be the kiss of death just given the density of the girls who want to become doctors.</p>
<p>Some here are still assuming, even with the talk about essays and LoRs, that it’s still all about stats- assuming that a kid with strong rigor, grades and scores just naturally puts forth a great app. </p>
<p>They think that, after all, he or she made it to the top in their one high school context, why wouldn’t their full app reflect all that greatness? </p>
<p>Some likened some of this to a job hunt. I’d say this: often, it doesn’t matter how great you were in your last position, how much coworkers and managers adored you, what accolades you got, whether you were employee of the year. What matters to make a giant leap to a better company or for better satisfaction, is whether you show skills and readiness for the needs, responsibilities and context of that new company. “Merit” is more than a look back.</p>
<p>And, of course, even if you do put out a great app, you still face competition from other great candidates, only so many openings, maybe they would like the new team member to be someone with this specialty or regional background, not yours. Or just maybe, that other guy/gal never got employee of the year, but has strengths you don’t. Or just seems to be the fit they need.</p>
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<p>Quote of the day!</p>
<p>sseamom: sorry! I was making the opposite assumption, which could quite likely be wrong.</p>
<p>blossom, we are essentially in agreement: the D’s gender and background worked against her at most of the NE schools, and she did better where she was more geographically desirable. (That’s why I earlier suggested that she might have done better at Pomona or Carleton than at Bowdoin and Williams.) <em>My</em> beef is with those who denied that the geography/gender/background thing makes a difference. </p>
<p>On the other hand, the parent would clearly prefer her to be comparatively near by, which may be one reason why she didn’t look farther afield than the U of C. I strongly doubt that a student from ANY other region of the country would be lambasted for wanting to stay in their own region. Obviously, they did make sure that she take advantage of EA and also included a financial safety. So they really had a pretty good list, in the end. I hope she can afford to go to the U of C. Their FA is not bad, but not the very best, either.</p>
<p>lookingforward, I, for one assume no such thing. But based on the OP’s description of what the D wrote, it sounds to me that she put forth a very good app.</p>
<p>I’m sure that Bowdoin and Williams are inundated with NE applicants and could probably fill a class with qualified candidates from that area alone. So, yes, geographics will play a role. And it’s also a fact that most parents, most kids want to go to school within an hour, three hours from where they live. The numbers drop down after that point, I read somewhere, and I believe it.</p>
<p>That there are special pools for things a school wants is a fact of life, but it is also a fact that when such pools exist, it does decrease the number of spots for those who are not in them. I see so many get defensive about this reality and try to rationalize and even deny it that it does reduce chances and spots for those not in that category. </p>
<p>That the OP did not get into schools local to her is in part due to her NOT applying to some that would have been more likely to accept her. Bowdoin is a tough one. Bates and Colby are not quite as selective. Wheaton is a school that is Mass and has a good acceptance rate. Schools like Union, Trinity, Hamilton, were not in the picture and I think she would have been likely to have been accepted to those. When you crank up the selectivity, those clusters become so thick even at the highest test score/gpa levels, that you know it becomes a lottery of sorts even if you are a top applicant that way. </p>